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S59 PT #5 - An Unexpected Surprise

A really unexpected event that occurred to [Name Redacted] is that he was actually fucking good for once this season. Usually [Name Redacted] clowns around a bit, managing to get wins but not putting in more effort than is needed, as he is normally behind a pretty dominant offense. This year, however, the offense all dried up, and [Name Redacted] found himself seeing a lot more rubber than usual, and the team therefore was depending more on him. He buckled down and tried and, much to his surprise, was able to put up some very good numbers. While his win and shutout cupboards remained relatively bare throughout the season, [Name Redacted] was able to put together a pretty great save percentage in an attempt to keep Manhattan in the playoffs. While he wasn't successful, [Name Redacted] has learned a lot from this season and hopes to repeat his performance in years to come.

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Im a little pressed for time, so my PT will be more repetitive than normal. In the 47th season, the Tampa Bay Barracuda has accrued five picks in the first round. JSS had done his scouting and made his roster moves to prime the fish for s50-s60 dominance. Starting with Gunnar Soderberg at number two over all, Tampa Bay got all of their players and seemed ready to roar with an active roster of high earners.

Perhaps more experienced members of the site new not to trust this tactic. There were eventual murmurings that Tampa Bay's rebuild would fall flat. Tony Ford made a wager with Jess that Los Angeles would win a cup before Tampa Bay could.

The unexpected surprise was that the asset management of that draft was so off. The number 5 pick went inactive almost immediately and the 13th and 14th picks were traded for almost nothing. #2 Soderberg was left to rot in humid tampa until she escaped to Chicago just a few seasons ago. all of the active players from their first-round picks have a challenge cup.

It was my draft class, so it's something that I'll refer to occasionally when thinking about career progress, and that roster perpetually surprises me.

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Patric Twist awoke on a sunny April morning and did his usual morning routine.  Stretch, start to make some coffee, take the dog for a walk and take a shower when he gets back.  It was sometime between the shower and pouring his coffee that Twist got one of the biggest surprises he's ever got.  A phone call, a very pedestrian thing.  Most are minor annoyances, some come with life changing information.  This phone call was the latter.  Patric was in the offseason following a Four-Star cup win, a early peak in his young hockey career.  He spent the following weeks celebrating and preparing to make the jump from Juniors to the SHL.  A chance to prove himself on the biggest stage.  He thought that chance would come with Chicago.  This phone call would dash those hopes.  He was being exposed in the upcoming expansion draft.  He could be selected by Atlanta or Seattle.  Patric knew little about either GM.  But he crossed his fingers he wouldn't be selected.  He wasn't so lucky.

The biggest surprise in my player's career happened before it technically even started, when I was drafted at 17 in the season 52 SMJHL entry draft. I was expecting to go undrafted for at least a few more rounds, and maybe even fall far enough to where scrubs like @Nhamlet got drafted. I thought this because I didn't do any of the PTs, IPs, or grab any of the pre draft TPE until pretty much the last minute, and I also wasn't very site or discord active. A few GMs reached out on the site and I said I likely wouldn't try to earn that much money, and I didn't even know there was a meet the GMs server until I actually became a GM myself. But somehow NL, kluster specifically, could read my mind better than I could, and grabbed me in the 2nd round thinking that they would get a capped and active defenseman. And the result is that 8 seasons later I'm facing just as big of a surprise, as I'm now coGMing that same team. Joined this league and genuinely thought I would take it casually in some free time, but to my own surprise I've spent probably an unhealthy amount of time on SHL things.

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Sigs: Thanks JNH, Lime, Carpy, and ckroyal92 

I’ve written and talked about this far too many times, but if anyone knows me, they know exactly what it is. The biggest surprise that I’ve experienced during my time in the site was the unexpected S44 Colorado Raptors run to the 4 Star Cup Finals after being significant sellers at the trade deadline, where the team I GM’d (Colorado) ran into the team that I played for after trading myself at the deadline (St. Louis). The team with essentially no players with substantial SMJHL experience and having a significant amount of inactive free agents with the exception of now-legendary starting goaltender Scottey Crawfling. That team, in all honesty, had absolutely no business getting passed the Montreal Militia in the first round, much less getting passed President’s Trophy winners Detroit in the conference finals, but they persevered and on the back of stellar goaltending and some timely goals, managed to make a 4 Star Cup finals appearance that lives on in Raptors lore. 

WC: 163 Words




Alex Winters (retired)
Matej Winters (retired)
Dominik Winters
S45 Jesster Trophy Winner
Challenge Cup Winning Goal Club: S52

One of the most surprising / unexpected events in SHL history for me was when the New Orleans Specters blew up their team a few seasons ago. I was a bit inactive at the time so I am not sure if there was any like clues or hints of that happening but I just remember one day I logged onto discord and there was a ton of talk about all the moves that the New Orleans Specters were making at the time. This was a huge surprise to me because the seasons previous, New Orleans were in the finals and brought one of the best SHL teams ever to 7 games and were still very well cup contenders. I also believe I had made the casino lines like a few days before this all went down so I was in a bit of a disarray as to what to do because the casino line was like freaking 30 something wins and now they were guaranteed to get less than like 20 or something like that with the team they were fielding.

This is the perfect PT, especially considering what happened to my player Valtterri Kauppinen in the offseason that just passed. Over the offseason, Kauppinen was traded from the Tampa Bay Barracuda in the Simulation Hockey League's eastern conference to the New Orleans out of the SHL's western conference, despite the teams being only two US states apart from each other. While Kauppinen was surely disappointed by the fact that he had just been traded to the league's best bottom feeding team for the past season, the thing he was most going to miss was the relationships he developed and the fact that he had just gotten used to being an active member of Tampa Bay's locker room, only to have it ripped away from him at the click of an 'enter' key. He went from being on the best up-and-coming team, to a team that had just entered a rebuild not even two seasons ago, and one that traded its first-round pick (which ended up being first overall) to... the Great Lakes. It was going to be an adjustment, that was for certain.

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A very unexpected surprise for Anchorage Armada forward Pablo Salvatici is the fact that he ended up leading the Simulation Major Junior Hockey League in points during the regular season. While unexpected it certainly wasn't unwelcome. All throughout the season he was near the top of the league leaders along with linemates Cole Carter and Tokkulu Lakkamaa, as well as Kelowna Knights star Cian McFelter. While Salvatici never actually took the lead at any point during the season, the final game of the season ended up being what propelled him over Carter, Lakkamaa and McFelter. All season he wasn't focusing on the point race or how well he was doing individually, but instead was just putting his head down and helping his team win. Once the season was over however he was overjoyed to win the race and looks forward to the awards ceremony where hopefully he can add another trophy to his cabinet to go along with the four star cup ring he already owns, and the one he currently is attempting to win with his teammates.

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I'll choose option b for the written portion since I have no clue what's going on overall in the SHL. I think the biggest surprise so far, to me, has been Leon's play for Newfoundland. After two seasons of below-average play, I really didn't have much optimism for this season. However, Leon exploded for 25 goals and 32 assists and 57 points, ranking 7th overall in points. Truly a miracle in his life.
Leon now had to deal with not only his regular life and hockey related stuff, but the attention from the fans and media that accompany such success. No longer could Leon just walk out of the locker room after away games and head to the bus, he'd have to take a side exit after a loss if he didn't want to be signing autographs or having fans and media take hundreds of pictures of him. The attention can be nice, and it's definitely helped the on ice play at times. But during slumps, it can be your biggest source of criticism, but Leon has handled it well this season.

Surely the most surprising event in SHL history for me would be the day that Tomen came back from a long period of inactivity. I think many people had begun to fear for the worst to be honest. When I was hired to Buffalo prior to Season 37, Tomen had already been inactive for a while. I actually wasn’t sure whether to keep his player around for the rebuild. I did end up putting his player on the block on more than one occasion, but thankfully nobody took me for a ride lol. He was young enough of a player that regression wasn’t a concern and his production was welcome on a team starved of talent. Right as his player began to enter regression and the majority of our prospects from the rebuild were getting called up, Tomen made the SHL world’s most miraculous comeback. It took me probably less than a day before I realized I needed to make him my co-GM asap. The rest is history.

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